Inside The Harlem Renaissance

August 4, 2002|By Oline H. Cogdill Mystery Columnist

Harlem Redux. Persia Walker. Simon & Schuster. $23. 311 pp.

There's little joy in attorney David McKay's homecoming to his family's Strivers Row mansion after a four-year self-imposed exile. His favorite sister, Lilian, has just committed suicide; her self-centered twin, Gem, has gone back to Europe. Tending to this grand house full of empty rooms and family secrets is the McKays' housekeeper, Annie Williams.

"A lot's done happened since you been gone, Mr. David ... an awful lot," is Annie's greeting to the young man to whom she was as much a parent as a maid.

The housekeeper's summation of the events don't even skim the surface of this well-plotted mystery set against the backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Harlem Redux, journalist Persia Walker's first novel, delivers a resounding historical look at turbulent times and its complex people.

During the years he's been away from Harlem, David has been working undercover for the burgeoning civil rights movement. He has cut all ties to his family and friends except Lilian, who was as much a friend as a sister. All their lives, David and Lilian had a close bond. The twins were a different matter. "Diff'rent as day and night, but just as connected," Annie says of the refined Lilian and the wild, man-crazy Gem. Despite their closeness, David refused Lilian's pleas in her frequent letters for him to return.

But apparently, Lilian didn't reveal all in the letters to her brother, Annie tells David. For more than a year, the calm, composed Lilian had been battling depression and delusions. She had inexplicably eloped with Jameson Sweet, a charming ladies' man with "the rank odor of frustrated ambition." And, after years of living and partying in Paris, the hated Gem had showed up one day at the mansion to stay for several months, only to disappear again before Lilian's funeral.

David refuses to believe that Lilian, no matter what her mental state, would have killed herself. When evidence hints that she may have been murdered, David begins to probe Lilian's last years and her circle of friends.

A promising novelist, Lilian was fully immersed in the Harlem Renaissance, which cultivated such talents as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and W.E.B. Du Bois. At the time, Harlem was the capital of black culture, intellectualism and hope. David's investigation puts him in the artistic circles where he learns not everyone's interest in black culture is pure. But Lilian wasn't the only one with a secret life. David fears that his own secrets may be revealed.

Walker captures the essence of 1920s Harlem and black culture, from the area's toniest salons to its low-down dives located just around the corner, but a world apart.

Harlem Redux is liberally sprinkled with the names of real people such as jazz musician Eubie Blake and C.J. Walker, who developed a line of hair products for black women that were sold in her string of beauty shops. But the author uses the real people just for context and background, careful to keep these references in check.

The author applies just as many layers to her characters. Walker is careful to give each a balance; no character is all good, nor is any all evil. And she focuses on those small moments that tell volumes about someone's personality. A woman who has lived all her life in poverty shows her great lust for luxury with one stroke. A man used to getting his way will fail because he is blind to his surroundings. And a white woman who has made the Harlem Renaissance her cause celebre unwittingly shows her prejudice.

While Harlem Redux sometimes stumbles over preachy dialogue, Walker keeps the story in line. It may be easy to figure out who killed Lilian, but Walker is not about to give up all her twists and turns so easily.

There's been a lot of attention about Stephen L. Carter's New York Times Best Seller The Emperor of Ocean Park offering a glimpse into black culture. Harlem Redux provides the real thing.